There are occasions in our lives when sitting in the waiting room of life can seem as if time is wasted. Though, at times, we do not see or understand the purpose in waiting it is a time to be reminded that God is working, moving and plotting for our good. Joy comes in the morning.
Don and Sara have known the waiting room well. It has been a deep valley for them and a rich experience as they have watched and waited with patience for God to mold shape and give greater form to their family. Beyond their wildest dreams God gave them exactly what they had hoped and prayed for - TWINS. He needed to have them wait for their boys to become their boys.
Dear reading friends, you learned about Don and Sara in January. It was only part of the story. Now, you get to finish the story. To God be the GLORY!!!!!!
We got our referral in November 2011. We had
hoped for a court date within three months, which was our estimated time-frame.
Continuing with our previous theme of delays and setbacks, our court date
wasn’t issued until 6 months after we had received our referral. We were just
taking the first of two required trips right around the time that we had hoped
that we would have our sons home. There was a period of time during this delay
that we actually feared that something was going to happen to cause the
adoption to fall through. The Ethiopian courts weren’t issuing us a court date
and no one seemed to understand why.
We did finally receive a court date for May
5, 2012. The week we spent in Ethiopia for court was unforgettable and one of the
happiest weeks of our lives. We passed court right away, which meant that our
sons were officially “our” sons, and we got to spend the rest of the week
enjoying them. We loved them instantly and God used our time with them to bond
our hearts to them in a very special way.
Adopting from Ethiopia requires two trips,
which meant that after our week with our sons, we had to return home and wait
for the remaining paperwork to be completed before we could legally and
officially take them home with us for good. It was approximately 2.5 months
before we returned to Ethiopia and much of that time was spent praying and
fasting for our sons. They were our sons; we had held and kissed them, fed
them, changed them, and rocked them to sleep, and now we were again separated
by thousands of miles. The Lord was teaching us during this time to continue to
entrust them to his care; he reminded us that he was the one caring for them
all of those months while we waited and he would continue to do so.
At the end of July, we decided we had waited
long enough and we booked one-way tickets to Ethiopia in order to spend the
remainder of our wait with the boys. We had no idea how long we would have to
wait while in Ethiopia, but we hoped and prayed that it wouldn’t be more than
two weeks. We ended up spending 10 days together in a hotel room before
receiving the boys’ visas and being cleared to take them home.
We arrived home on the 2nd of
August to a crowd of family and friends cheering for us at the airport. We had
traveled over 24 hours and missed two nights of sleep, but that couldn’t
squelch the utter joy and relief of finally being home. I’ll never forget
putting the boys in their car seats for the first time and thinking, “They’re
really here. They’re home.” It was one of the sweetest moments to watch their
tired, sleepy heads rest against their car seats as we left the airport and
turned onto the interstate.
We’ve been home now for almost two months,
and the relief and thankfulness still haven’t subsided. Almost daily, I feel a
measure of surprise and relief that they are really home. For years we had
prayed for children and then for months we had specifically waited and prayed
for these two boys and suddenly they are home with us. There is a park near our
house that my husband and I would often take prayer walks to and I spent a lot
of that time praying for our sons. I would see these two little baby swings and
imagine having the boys swinging and smiling side by side. Now we take the boys
to the park with us and they really do smile and swing side by side. It’s their
favorite thing to do at the park and it is a picture of answered prayer to me.
Looking back, it’s hard to pinpoint all that
God has taught us during this process. I’m sure there are ways that the pain
and the prayers and the waiting have shaped us that we aren’t even fully aware
of yet, but I do know that God has used the waiting for children and a
difficult adoption process to teach us to trust him, to center our lives on
him, to find our joy and purpose in him, and to let go of our lives here on
earth.
When I look at our sons, I am filled with joy
and an intense love that I could never have imagined. I love to love them, and
I marvel that God gave them to us. He planned them for us. It took over 5.5
years of infertility, close to 3 years in a mostly dark adoption tunnel, and
thousands of miles of separation, but God gave them to us. He entrusted them to
us. All of our delays and the pain and the prayers were leading to two little
boys born in a remote village in northern Ethiopia that would one day be our
sons.
There isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t
thank God for them. He spared and sustained their lives throughout months of
malnourishment, two different orphanages, and various caregivers, and then he
brought our whole adoption process to completion so that on August 2nd,
we could walk through our front door as a family of four. This is one of the
great “goods” that came out of our waiting, but it isn’t the only one.
Probably more significant is the good that
God has done within our hearts. We have learned, though not perfectly, to
treasure God above all else. He used our waiting to turn our eyes more fully to
him. We have learned to apply the gospel to our lives. The death of Christ on
our behalf and the reconciliation that we have with God proves that God is for
us and utterly trustworthy, no matter what we are going through. We have asked
hard questions, such as: What is really important in life? What do we want to
accomplish? What are our priorities? Years ago, we would have been satisfied
with 2-3 little carbon copies of ourselves, a nice little house, a nice little
life: the American dream. We’ve seen through that façade now and have an
intensified desire to use our lives to glorify God and do good to others.
We couldn’t see the end of our story 5.5
years ago. We couldn’t see how all of the delays were working for our good. We
couldn’t see how having to wait longer was going to shape our priorities, our
faith, and ultimately lead us to our sons, but it did. And we wouldn’t change a
thing.
We don’t know what it’s like to love a
biological child, but I can tell you that loving our adopted children is
amazing. On the one hand, we love them with a natural love. They are our sons
and we delight in them. And in addition to that, there is this sense that God
is with us and is loving them through us. He is the father to the fatherless and
the bible makes it clear that he has a special love for the orphan. When we
hear their laughter and see them smile, I sense the pleasure of God.
Often during our process, I read the
following quote from John Piper. It gave me great encouragement when we were in
the midst of our tunnel, and reading it now on the other side, it rings even
more true.
“Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after
switchback. And the point of biblical stories is to help us feel in our
bones not just know in our heads, that God
is for us in all of these strange turns.
The life of the godly is not a straight line to glory.
It’s more like a dark and seemingly unknown trail through the mountains. There
are rockslides and slippery curves, and hairpin turns that make you go backward
in order to go forward.
But along this hazardous twisted road that doesn’t let
you see very far ahead, and may even make you feel like you’ve been lead to the
edge of the cliff, God gives us
encouragement and hope that all the perplexing turns in our lives are
going somewhere good.
Often when we think God is farthest from us, and has
even turned against us, the truth is, that he is laying a foundation for
greater happiness in our lives. God is
plotting for our joy. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with
far reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ."
From John Piper's book, A Sweet and Bitter
Providence
